


Unlaced

by Rosedamask



Category: Emma - A Victorian Romance
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosedamask/pseuds/Rosedamask
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleanor Campbell, moving on.  Set during and after "The Sea of Brighton" from the manga Bangaihen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlaced

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Venneh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venneh/gifts).



I.

Before she sank into the sea of Brighton, Eleanor was afraid.

It was childish, she told herself, to be so afraid of life. The last time she set foot in the resort, it was as her formal girlhood was drawing to a close, and she was not afraid then. She had long since realised that, in an existence where she was shielded from so much as minor impertinences by a hundred fragile layers of etiquette, there was little chance for her to encounter the horrid or the gothic of her storybooks.

And on returning to London, Annie had swept up her hair for the first time, leaving her without the option of letting it curtain her downcast eyes, her easy blushes; she was laced into the ballgown she had dreamed of for years; her mother allowed her to have diamonds dangling with precarious delicacy from her ears. She was a lady now, and surely she should possess the calm resolve which her mother constantly taught her to cultivate.

Still, Eleanor knew that, even cocooned in swathes of silk and status, she had no protection from heartache.

Until the day she ventured out to the shore, she had kept her activities solitary and habitual – tea in quiet corners, riding every morning – and all but Annie, as much a part of her as her shadow, she held at arm's length. Once, before her father sent her away, she had wandered through her house at night as though she were sleepwalking, lead through dark shadows on the unfathomable whims of a lovesick heart. Now, she walked through the sunlit piers and gleaming promenades of Brighton in much the same fashion, without purpose and without any promise of resolution. For a while, she was glad to be buried under cascades of lace, sweeping brims of feathered hats, and the dark veils she wore with her riding habit; to be unseen and untouched by the world as much as she could dare to hope.

But she could not hide forever.

It was, perhaps, a sense of duty which eventually ushered her into a bathing machine. She had no illusions about what her life must be like when her father sent for her to come home: morning visits and afternoon tea, long nights at dinner parties and the seasonal balls. Likewise, she had illusions about _who_ she must be: poised and at ease; her chin lifted just the way her mother used to raise it; her hands folded demurely in her lap, but always ready to inevitably be given to a respectable suitor.

Eleanor supposed she must train herself for these demands, and she must start now. To bathe in the sea was a proper thing, a fashionable thing, and she was perfectly resolved to do it, however awful the idea seemed as Annie rid her of her frothy breastplates and ostrich-plumed helmet, and she stood gaunt and bloomless in her bathing suit.

And then—the water cradled her, and for a moment she thought of nothing but the feeling of her own buoyancy, the freedom of floating. For a moment, it was as if the burden of rejection had been blown away by a salty breeze, to become something lost at sea.

II.

On one particularly dewy midsummer morning, Eleanor rode across the mountains to meet Ernest Reeve without the armour of her sisters.

Despite a chill wind which fluttered ribbons and candy-striped parasols alike, Monica took to the waters the afternoon before, throwing herself under waves as though she held them responsible for a grievous personal slight, fighting her peculiar enemy with the ferocity of a junglecat. She emerged from the bathing machine with her hair soaked and her head held high, undoubtedly considering herself the victor.

That was before her nose swelled up the following morning.

Sophia remained by the bedside of the indomitable invalid, reading, although occasionally unable to resist shooting glances of genteel gloating over the top of the page. As a result, Eleanor sat with Annie in companionable silence, looking out to sea.

She sketched the view with all the appropriate appreciation of the picturesque and the precision and delicacy of hand which befitted any lady of her breeding. Then, she did something she would never have done under the careful tutelage of her governesses, and looked on a blank page of her sketchbook as an opportunity to draw entirely from her imagination. Linnet birds and fairy queens alike spread their wings over horizon of her canvas.

If she were waiting for William, she could never have kept a steady hand.

What she felt in Ernest's company was, she had finally allowed herself to notice, something quite different. Instead of her heart pounding so terribly that it was as if her ribcage was an aviary for a hundred agitated, frantic birds, this was—perhaps this was almost the serene joy that blew over her with the breeze from the sea; her quiet pleasure when her garden's air was thick with roses.

Joy unspoiled by fear.

Her steps were freer and easier at balls, and although she had never been given to breathless giggling that she sometimes envied in other girls, laughter now rose in her throat more often than colour rose in her cheeks.

For all the good it did against the bedazzlement that clouded her eyes on coming out in society, she had always been raised to be cautious in her estimation of a gentleman's opinion of her. Even if it was forward of her, with Ernest—her worth, she was secretly certain, was not being measured by the fortune of her estate (for he barely remembered to pay any mind to his own), an opportunity for increased standing in society (for he sounded far more at ease with his college playmates than in any less chummy assemblies), or how fashionable her deportment was (for he had seen her drenched and shivering, wretched and ungracious, silly and girlish; he not turned away).

"Miss Campbell!"

The sea winds carried his voice to her, from over the downs. Shielding her eyes, she looked out to him, laughing a little as he dashed toward her, waving his cap. And so he would arrive with his hair dishevelled, and sprawl out on the blanket as Annie helped her with the provisions, and then she would peel off the protective kid leather of her gloves, and reach out to the bluebells—crush the grass between her fingertips.

Eleanor raised her arm, and waved her welcome to him.

III.

The ephemeral white mists of her wedding gown and veil were folded away. Now, they were locked in a trunk which had stood in her old bedchamber for twenty years and which, she imagined, was now waiting with the rest of her cargo in the unknown land of her new establishment.

As Ernest told her when they walked in circles arm-in-arm about the tiny rose garden at her parents' estate, which she seemed to have outgrown like the barred windows of her old nursery, she could grow a forest of roses there if she so desired.

A rose which she'd raised went to each of her bridesmaids, and to Annie. Others were pressed between the pages of Ernest's Latin volumes. Once, he wrote to her that the distraction to study they caused was impossible to resist.

Her suite overlooked the promenade, overlooked the bright moon and its mirror in the sea. Eleanor kept the window open as she unpinned her hair, letting it brush down the nape of her neck, the back of her gown.

Annie would not be unlacing her tonight; Eleanor shivered in the night air.

The window was closed, the candles blown out, her ribbons unlaced; she peeled her gloves off and laid them on the dressing table—she crushed Ernest's hair beneath her fingertips.

That night, Eleanor remembered sinking into the sea.


End file.
